Because a control plane and a forwarding plane of a mobile gateway are not separated in an evolved packet core (EPC) network, a capacity of the EPC network cannot be expanded flexibly. To resolve the problem, the control plane and the forwarding plane of the mobile gateway are separated in the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1, FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a network architecture in which a control function and a forwarding function of a mobile gateway are separated in an EPC network. A control plane 101 of a mobile gateway may determine a data processing rule related to a packet sent by a UE (user equipment), and delivers the data processing rule to a forwarding plane 102 by using an interface between the control plane 101 and the forwarding plane 102. The forwarding plane 102 processes, according to the data processing rule, a packet sent by a base station 103 (an external network 104), and then sends a processed packet to the external network 104 (the base station 103).
The forwarding plane integrates a point anchoring function of a user IP (Internet Protocol) address and multiple service processing functions. Therefore, the forwarding plane has an address resource and includes a computing resource. The address resource that the forwarding plane has determines a quantity of users who can be served by the forwarding plane, and the computing resource included in the forwarding plane determines a quantity of packets that can be processed by the forwarding plane at a same moment. The computing resource in the forwarding plane usually remains unchanged after delivery of a device. The address resource in the forwarding plane is allocated to a forwarding plane device by means of configuration. Address resource configuration update relates to routing information update of a peripheral network element, and usually cannot be implemented in real time.
A quantity of users in the EPC network and a quantity of packets sent by all users at a same moment do not remain unchanged. Therefore, when the forwarding plane has insufficient address resources or computing resources, a forwarding plane needs to be added. However, when the quantity of users in the EPC network increases, and the quantity of packets sent by all the users at a same moment remains unchanged, addition of a forwarding plane causes waste of the computing resource; when the quantity of users in the EPC network remains unchanged, and the quantity of packets sent by all the users at a same moment increases, addition of a forwarding plane causes waste of the address resource. Even if the quantity of users increases, and the quantity of packets sent by all the users at a same moment also increases, the address resource or the computing resource may be wasted.